Starting a voyage of discovery

A student at Tonbridge Grammar School in Kent tentatively peers into her results envelope

Edited by John Clare

12:01AM BST 19 Aug 2004

A-level students around the county have found out whether or not they made the grade. If you haven't, says John Clare, look before you leap into a hasty second choice

Today is a milestone in the lives of more than 300,000 young people. They will learn the results of the A-levels they took in June. The grades they have been awarded will effectively determine their futures.

Virtually all of them will be planning to go to university, either immediately or after taking a year out. Most will have fulfilled their teachers' predictions and met the terms of the conditional offer they accepted from their preferred institution earlier this year.

So the slip of paper they hold in their hands this morning should be a ticket to euphoria. With the start of term a good six weeks away, all that these lucky students need do now is confirm their accommodation arrangements and, perhaps, start thinking about how they are going to help meet the cost of it all.

On average, that will amount to more than £8,000 a year, only partially offset by parental contributions and the student loan.

Some will learn today that they have slipped a grade and, with their hearts in their mouths, will have to phone the admissions tutor to ask if the offer of a place still stands. If they applied for a heavily over-subscribed course at an academically selective university, the answer will almost certainly be no.

They will then have to decide whether to accept the "insurance" offer they received from their second-choice university or else take a gap year, improve their grades and try again next time. Or they may decide that further study is not for them at present and go out and find a job - in which, it needs to be said, there is no shame.

Those who find they have done significantly worse than predicted face similar choices but with the addition of a seductive invitation to "enter clearing" - higher education's equivalent of a lucky dip in which all too many of the prizes are lemons. Anyone contemplating this option should proceed with extreme caution.

The tens of thousands of places that will be offered from today on the UCAS clearing website - www.ucas.com - are those that universities failed to fill the first time around because too few applicants could raise any interest in them.

Either the course or the institution was a turn-off, or possibly both.Applicants must ask themselves, therefore, what has changed, other than their own circumstances. Signing up on the spur of the moment for a course in "combined studies" at an unvisited institution languishing near the bottom of the league table is more likely to end in tears than usher in a new dawn.

On this of all days, three facts about higher education are worth remembering. First, one in four of those who enrol on a degree course this autumn will fail to graduate. Second, whether or not they graduate, those who stay the course will leave with an average debt of more than £10,000. And, third, up to 40 per cent of those who do graduate will be forced to settle for jobs that make few if any demands on their graduate skills.

And a fourth point worth bearing in mind is that hardly anyone has the potential student's interests at heart. The Government, with a political agenda to fulfil, is desperate to herd as many young people as possible into higher education.

Universities, which are funded on the basis of how many students they recruit, are chiefly interested in bums on seats, turning admissions tutors into high-pressure sales people. And teachers, parents and even school friends are liable to be swept along by the tide into believing that university is the necessary next step after A-levels. It is not - but it can take courage to stand against the crowd.

Such pressures are one of the best arguments for taking a gap year. It offers a rare opportunity for youngsters to breathe, look around and grow up before having to take yet another set of irrevocable decisions.

After all, at 14 they had to choose their GCSE subjects, which narrowed their options; at 15 they had to choose their AS-levels, which narrowed their options still further; at 16 they had to choose their A-levels, narrowing their options further still; and at 17 they had to decide what they wanted to study at which university, effectively determining their future careers. They deserve a break!

And it is not too late. Although, formally, applicants who meet the terms of either their first-choice or insurance offer are bound to accept it, in practice no university will enforce the contract.

So anyone who has any doubts about the course or the institution he or she was forced to choose nearly a year ago is free to withdraw, think again and reapply for entry next year or even for a deferred place in 2006, so avoiding the higher fees that will be introduced then.

Gap years do not have to involve costly and elaborately organised travel to exotic foreign parts, even if those are the most heavily promoted experiences in a crowded market.

Young people who do a variety of low-level jobs or volunteer to undertake community work in challenging surroundings can learn just as much about themselves and what they want to do with their lives as those who embark on package tours of the Third World.

What matters most is that the year should be well used and look convincing on paper. For the inescapable fact is that employers, faced with a plethora of graduates, are looking for evidence of the development of the personal qualities they prize so highly, especially those derived from working in a purposeful environment and of dealing with people.

Another 300,000 or so sixth-formers will today learn the results of their AS-levels, giving them a shrewd idea of which universities to apply to in the autumn. And so the cycle will begin again.

Many young people will feel ambivalent about today, their pleasure at a milestone reached tinged with scepticism, perhaps even cynicism. They read that the exams they have worked hard for have been dumbed down; that many of the universities are so underfunded that they will make only a minimal contribution to their education; and that the degrees they will eventually be awarded may do nothing for their job prospects.

For that, their parents' generation owes them an apology. The rush into mass higher education was, and still is being, crassly handled. But young people owe it to themselves to make the best of the many opportunities that lie ahead. Bon voyage!